Investigating and Explicating the Features of Sales in the Documents of the Afsharid Era

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Researcher of the Organization of Libraries, Museums and Documents Center of As tan Quds Razavi

Abstract
Seals are among the significant elements that confirm and consolidate the documents of every period. Seals possess the socio-political, anthropological, and religious messages of every era. Therefore, exploring and understanding the features of the seals in those periods demonstrate the structure of correspondences. The judicial and administrative correspondences and related issues of Afsharid era that is a short period in the history of Iran have so far not been explored. This study tried to explore the features of the seals in the court, religious, and economic documents of this period. The aim was to see how much the seals have been used in the documents of this period. Moreover, the study tried to see what changes had been made in the text of seals according to the status of owners of seals. Exploring The position of the seals in Afsharid documents was another purpose of this study that focused on the documents of the Document Center of Astan Quds Razavi. A sample of the documents was selected. They were chronologically classified considering the type and content. The results showed that religious issues and the names of the owner are of high status in the text of seals. The position of the seals differs according to the kind of the documents. The study also showed that seals had been used more frequently in the documents of the Shahrokh period than in the documents of the Nader Shah period.

Keywords